Relativity

Jeff Lipsky is a seminal figure in independent film distribution, having helped bring the work of such now-revered directors as John Cassavetes and Mike Leigh to broader audiences. Though still a distributor - putting out recent films such as "Barbara" and "Sister" - he has over the past few years ramped up his output as a filmmaker himself. Putting aside his business sense, he has set out to write and direct a series of idiosyncratic, slightly perverse and personal films. With the latest, "Molly's Theory of Relativity," Lipsky presents a story with a theatrically heightened sense of reality (it could easily be a play)

The racist comments purportedly made by Donald Sterling in the audio recording that surfaced Saturday via TMZ.com are the latest in a years-long string of racially charged incidents linked to the real estate mogul. In 2009, Sterling agreed to a $2.765-million settlement in a case that alleged discrimination against African Americans, Latinos and others at apartment buildings he owned in Los Angeles County. Sterling denied the charges by the Justice Department and in two separate lawsuits by former tenants.

In "Science Project of a Lifetime" (Feb. 24) I find that, after "four decades ... and $700 million," Gravity Probe B "arguably has had more delays, cost overruns and cancellations than any other NASA scientific endeavor." Also on Feb. 24 I read that, after "21 years and $6.9 billion," the "Army Cancels Comanche Helicopter." What is the matter with NASA that in twice as much time it has expended on this probe only about 10% of the cost of the Comanche? I suppose that the varying amounts may serve to illustrate a different theory of relativity.

She had me at privyet . I had just delivered a talk in Romania on Jewish-Mormon relations (a niche topic, to be sure) at a church in Bucharest, and standing before me was Florina, a raven-haired beauty who greeted me in Russian after learning we had both lived in Moscow. Then she switched to English, which she had acquired as an au pair in London. I was a never-married bachelor in my early 40s and had begun to doubt that Miss Right and I would ever cross paths, much less during a speaking tour of Eastern Europe.

Among the oft-repeated predictions of Albert Einstein's famous theory of relativity is that if a twin travels through the cosmos on a high-speed rocket, when he returns to Earth he will be noticeably younger than the twin who stayed home. Now physicists have demonstrated that the same is true even if the traveling twin is merely driving in a car about 20 mph. But in that case, when the twin gets home from the grocery store, he is only a tiny fraction of a nanosecond younger, according to a report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

The Pioneer 10 spacecraft, now farther away from Earth than any other device built by humans, will be asked to prove part of Einstein's theory of relativity later this year. If it does so, it will have succeeded where scores of scientists have failed.

Albert Einstein was one of the great minds of all time, but even he didn't know if his General Theory of Relativity was correct. But now Stanford University researchers hope to find out, or at least come reasonably close. Last week they took a big step in the university's quest when they doled out a $100-million subcontract to Lockheed Corp. to build a spacecraft for what they say could be "one of the great physics experiments of the 20th Century."

Squinting into the dark heart of the Milky Way, astronomers have discovered a star that orbits closer to the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy than any other star yet observed. The relatively dim star, known as S0-102, is so close that it takes just 11.5 years to circle the black hole at speeds as high as 5,000 kilometers per second - or 1.7% as fast as the speed of light. The previous record-holder, S0-2, took 16 years to make its way around. A black hole is a star whose mass has collapsed to a point called a singularity.

Regarding "Bitter Truths" [Dec. 21]: An indoors California girl allergic to nearly every animal, tree, blossom and blade of grass on Earth, having seen snow fall only three times in my life (the second time being in January 1962, the day Richard Nixon, campaigning for governor, paraded down Foothill Boulevard), I want to tell you how much I enjoyed the essays describing vividly frigid sea, winter sky and relativity of cold. Brrrr. Joan Jobe Smith Long Beach

GAZA CITY - Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas on Wednesday announced a reconciliation deal to end their seven-year schism, in a further blow to U.S.-led efforts to broker a peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israelis. Leaders of the groups said they will form a unity government within five weeks, solicit a vote of confidence from the Palestinian parliament, then schedule elections in six months. "This is good news to tell our people: The era of division is over," Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Hamas, declared at a news conference here.

Even as the United States continues its historic move toward fairness and equity for gay people, antiquated anti-sodomy laws remain on the books in a dozen states. Theoretically, these laws were rendered unenforceable by the Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in Lawrence vs. Texas, but apparently not everyone has received that message. In the Lawrence case, the court declared that state laws banning consensual same-sex relations were unconstitutional. Yet somehow, between 2011 and 2014, 12 men were arrested in East Baton Rouge Parish in Louisiana under the state's remaining anti-sodomy laws.

Along with its manicured greenbelts and meticulously neat neighborhoods, Irvine suddenly has something else on its hands: an international incident. Members of its vast Chinese American community are fighting a city decision to bow to the demands of Vietnamese Americans, who arrived by the hundreds this month to demand that Irvine abandon its plans to formalize a relationship with a tourist town in coastal Vietnam. A parade of speakers spent hours pleading with council members to reject the proposal, saying it would be insulting for the city to forge a "friendship" with a country they'd fled to escape a brutal communist regime.

BEIJING - On the first Sunday of March, China awoke to sickening news: Black-clad attackers with knives had hacked through crowds at the train station in the southern city of Kunming, killing 29 and injuring more than 140. Reporters leaped into action, gathering details from victims in their hospital beds. President Xi Jinping urged all-out efforts to investigate the slaughter. The incident was quickly dubbed "China's 9/11. " But by nightfall Monday, the state-run New China News Agency signaled that it was time to move on. "Kunming railway station serious violent terror case is successfully solved," its headline said.

SEOUL - The official death toll in South Korea's ferry disaster rose to 49 early Sunday after divers gained access to the submerged vessel and recovered more than a dozen bodies. Government officials reported that divers had retrieved the bodies by breaking a window on the vessel, but it was unclear whether they had gained entry to the ship. In a sign that hope had run out for the survival of any of the 256 listed as missing, officials asked relatives of those aboard to provide DNA samples to expedite the identification of bodies.

Socked by mortgage-related legal expenses, Bank of America Corp. lost $276 million during the first quarter, sending its stock down sharply. The quarterly loss, its first in 2½ years, came despite lower loan losses and better than expected results in fixed-income trading, a slowing business that hurt rival JPMorgan Chase & Co. during the quarter. The results included $6 billion in litigation expense, much of it related to toxic bonds backed by housing-boom mortgages from Countrywide Financial Corp., the aggressive Calabasas lender that nearly collapsed before being acquired by Bank of America in 2008.

Enormous public resources go to foster families and group homes, and those expenditures are appropriate because the county and state are the virtual guardians for thousands of abused and neglected children. As such, the state and the county are duty-bound to ensure that the children receive proper care and, despite any mistreatment at home and despite the turmoil of being sent to live with strangers, are put on a pathway toward a successful adulthood. But Los Angeles County also places thousands more abused or neglected children not with foster families or group homes but with their own grandparents and other relatives, and that's a good thing; numerous studies over many years show that such children do better in the long run than those in foster care - if those family members have the money to properly clothe and care for the children.

A man was shot and killed Tuesday afternoon and police were searching for the gunman after bullets tore through a residential neighborhood in Pico-Union, officials said. A man in his 20s walked up to another man near Union Avenue and 18th Street, fired several shots at him and ran away, said Los Angeles Police Department Public Information Officer Nuria Vanegas. Vanegas didn't have information on whether the men knew each other but characterized the shooting as gang-related.